Tactical military and commercial applications require synchronization in dynamic environments and provide peer-to-peer communications. According to one communication application, software define radios (SDRs) often include an expensive 1 part per billion (ppb) or less reference oscillator. The expensive local oscillator is necessary to maintain local clock synchronization in GPS denied environments and allow greater separation time from the network without requiring initialization.
Networking waveforms or communications use synchronization slots to maintain network and time synchronization. If a conventional synchronized network splits into two subnetworks in a global positioning system (GPS) denied environment for duration of time, the two subnetworks can remerge only if they receive the synchronization bursts during a synchronization time slot when they come back into communication range. For this to occur, the time drift between the two subnetworks has to be less than the duration of half the time of the synchronization slot. Thus, for remerging subnetworks without a time consuming initialization procedure, the amount of time the two networks can be separated in a GPS denied environment is dependent on the accuracy of the local oscillator and the length of the synchronization time slot and number of the synchronization slots. Synchronization slots are network overhead and increasing the number of synchronization slots or the length of synchronization slots adversely affects the network throughput.